List of most expensive association football transfers

The following is a list of most expensive football association transfers, which details the highest transfer fees ever paid for players as of the summer transfer window of 2017.

As well as the most expensive transfers of all time, the page also lists transfers which broke the world transfer record. The first recorded record transfer was of Willie Groves from West Bromwich Albion to Aston Villa for £100 in 1893. This occurred just eight years after the introduction of professionalism by The FA in 1885.[1] The current transfer record was set by the transfer of Neymar from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain for €222 million (£200 million) in August 2017.[2][3]

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Most of the highest-value transfers on this list are to clubs under UEFA's jurisdiction, and most of the purchasing clubs are from England, Spain, Italy and France. However, in the mid 2010s a few Chinese teams have made expensive purchases.

The default order in this table is based on the transfer amount in euros. Due to exchange rate fluctuations the order is different in pound sterling, which are also shown in the table. Transfers that took place before the adoption of the euro are given in their approximate euro equivalent. The list includes only the top fifty disclosed transfer fees.

Three players appear on the list twice: Neymar, James Rodríguez and Ángel Di María. All of the players on the list are of either European (UEFA) or South American (CONMEBOL) origin. There are no players from the remaining regions, namely Africa (CAF), Asia (AFC), North America (CONCACAF) and Oceania (OFC).

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial €105 million, plus another €5 million in additional bonuses; Pogba's agent Mino Raiola also received a reported €27m from Juventus, from a portion of aforementioned transfer fee from Manchester United.

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial £75 million, plus another £15 million in additional bonuses.

^fee originally in 150 billion lire; the fixed exchange rate between euro and lire was 1:1936.27

^Initial transfer fee for Ibrahimović is indeterminable. According to Barcelona's press release, Ibrahimović signed a 5-year contract, for €46 million fee in installments and the exchange of Eto'o (valued at €20 million) and the loan of Alexander Hleb (with an option to buy for a €10 million fee), with a €250 million release clause, making Ibrahimović worth €66 million plus the undisclosed loan fee of Hleb. However, the Hleb deal collapsed. Eventually Ibrahimović cost Barcelona €69.884 million according to their financial report, which included other fees. As per the Inter book the fee was €69.5 million, but part of the Inter fee (max. 5% according to FIFA regulation) were deducted and distributed by Barcelona to youth clubs of Ibrahimović: Malmö FF and AFC Ajax as solidarity contribution.

^The fee broke the world record in pound sterling, but not in euro; as the fee was paid in installments, the accountant that prepared the financial report, adjusted the value to €66.073 million as the present value to reflect the loss in interests

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial £58 million, plus another £12 million in additional bonuses.

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial £44 million, plus another £5 million in additional bonuses.

^Lazio broke the then-world transfer record by paying £35 million (£16 million upfront and transferred Matías Almeyda and Sérgio Conceição) to acquire Crespo. The total transfer fee later amounted to £40 million.

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial €57.1 million, plus another €2 million in additional bonuses. Neymar received a €10 million signing bonus. Neymar's agent also received €4 million.

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial £50 million (€57m), plus another £3 million in additional bonuses.

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial €53 million (£46.5m), plus another €7 million (£6.1m) in additional bonuses.

^Part of the fees was paid via the transfer of Jonathan Bachini to Parma for a total of 100 billion lire; the fixed exchange rate of lira to euro was 1936.27 lire to 1 euro.

^Manchester United paid £36 million up front for Martial, but his contract contains three bonus clauses worth £7.2 million each, taking the potential fee to £57.6 million. The clauses each relate to certain accomplishments being achieved in the next four years, including if Martial scores 25 goals during that span, racks up 25 caps for France or wins the Ballon d'Or before June 2019.

^An indeterminate size of the fee was paid via the transfer of Diego Simeone to Lazio that totaled €45 million.

^Fee originally in 85 billion lire; the fixed exchange rate between euro and lire was 1:1936.27

It was not until 1928 that the first five-figure transfer took place. David Jack of Bolton Wanderers was the subject of interest from Arsenal, and in order to negotiate the fee down, Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman got the Bolton representatives drunk.[138][139] Subsequently, David Jack was transferred for a world record fee when Arsenal paid £10,890 to Bolton for his services, after Bolton had asked for £13,000, which was double the previous record made when Sunderland signed Burnley's Bob Kelly a fee of for £6,500.[137]

The second player to twice be transferred for world record fees is Diego Maradona.[137][139] His transfers from Boca Juniors to Barcelona for £3m, and then to Napoli for £5m, both broke the record in 1982 and 1984 respectively. The third became Ronaldo with his record-breaking move from PSV Eindhoven to Barcelona in 1996 for £13.2m, although Alan Shearer's transfer to Newcastle broke the record the same summer. A year later Inter Milan paid £19.5m for Ronaldo and again he became the player with the highest transfer fee.

Zidane's record stood for 8 years, the longest since the 1940s. Madrid broke their own record when signing Cristiano Ronaldo for £80m (€94m)from Manchester United in 2009,[137][148] before signing Gareth Bale from Tottenham Hotspur in 2013. Although Real initially insisted that the transfer cost €91.59 million, slightly less than the Ronaldo fee, the deal was widely reported to be around €100 million (around £85.1 million).[149][150] Documents released in 2013 revealed that installments brought the final Bale fee up to a total of €100,759,418[137][151]. In 2016, Manchester United eventually took the record away from Real Madrid, signing French midfielder Paul Pogba for €105 million (£89 million), [152] four years after having sold him for £1.5 million to Juventus.

A year after the Pogba transfer, however, there was a major jump in the record fee. Paris St. Germain matched the €222 million buyout fee of Barcelona'sNeymar, converted to a reported £198 million[153][154] or £200 million[2][5] by different sources. This was the first time that the record fee was paid by a French club.